So Long, You will Not be Missed

I finally concluded about 2 months of being in the field. Most of it was pretty lazy. For over a week I was doing medical coverage for ROTC, which, by the way, seemed to consist mostly of whiny children (the cadets) or talking with the cadre (awesome ex-Special Forces sergeants). We returned to Ft. Lewis for 3 days, just long enough to ready our Stryker to go back out and bam, we were at Yakima for a month. Yakima is a place of sand and misery in about equal amounts. It has a lot of sand, FYI. 100 degree weather while in body armor, missing the 3 weeks of yearly beach weather Washington state gets.
We finished that interminable month up and came back for some well deserved showers and the glorious ability to order pizza. Except for poor little Andy. He "got" to go to Mountain Medicine.
On the plane ride out to the location of the course, my head was filled with visions of myself dressed like Rambo, mashing up some plants to create a dressing for bullet wounds, constructing a bow to hunt for dinner, and sewing up gashes using a fishing hook and a thread from my shirt. Yeah, that really wasn't what the class was about.
The first three days were spent in a class room learning about things like HAPE (high altitude pulmonary edema) and HAFE (high altitude flatulence expulsion) and trying to catch our breaths after climbing a flight of stairs. In case you didn't pick it, the class took place at about 8000 feet. Well above the height that oxygen lives and dwells.
Of course our instructors knew that the best way to acclimatize is strenuous exercise. So we went for a hike. 4 miles laterally and 4000 feet up. With 90 pound rucks. Yep, the Army knows how to have fun. This was of course foreshadowing of good times to come. The next few days we spent learning how to set up a rappel, how to do steep earth evacuation of a casualty, and how to make a one rope bridge across a river so that only one person had to get wet. Oh yeah, that person was me. All of this culminated in a Casevac race Army vs. Navy in which the Army, led by my team, completely dominated. It was beautiful when they staggerd in an hour after us. Sweet victory.
We got the weekend off for fun and games, and then Monday the craziness began. For the next few days we did nothing but walk around the mountains going up and down hills all day from one casualty to the other, always wearing our rucks. Total distance according to instructors with GPS was 45 miles. Not fun at all. The last night was survival night. We got one rucksack for every 11 people and were told that the instructors would be back in the morning, don't start a fire. That was cold and miserable. The only thing that kept most of us from leaving was the fact that we would be done the next morning. The sun has never been so desperately awaited. Thus concluded two weeks of not fun.
--Andy
And I am reading Catch-22 for the first time. What a funny book. Even though the narrative is spoofing military life, Heller is disturbingly accurate quite often.